We were doing QA in the office, and we needed a way to record some of the particularly hard to reproduce bugs.

Solution: masking tape of course.

The result? Well we still can’t work out what was causing the bug, but now I can capture me beating Agent Simon’s high scores on video which is ultimately much more satisfying.

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Last weekend, we competed in the #fab48hr game making competition in Brisbane, Australia… and what a wild weekend! We won! That was great, but more importantly I was absolutely blown away by the quality of games made by the other teams. I was particularly impressed with the level of quality and polish that was developed in “indie” / student room. There is an enormous amount of talent in Australia and I’m sure we’re going to see more from those awesome young developers.

In the #fab48hr competition, each team must concept, design, and create a game based on three keywords that are provided at the beginning of the competition. This year, those words were “suit”, “key”, and “badger”, provided by Yug, Hex, and Jinx.

We made this:

Download the game we made here [WINDOWS] or if you use a Mac, try this link [MAC].

The Badgers of Fury 161

How to Play: Without giving too much away, if you have a couple of XBox controllers, plug them in for the best experience, using “A” as your action button. If you have to use a keyboard, you can use the arrow keys for player 1 and WASD for player 2, with “shift” as the action button. Also be aware the the glowing yellow floor (which totally looks like lava) will kill player 1 and the swirling blue circles (evidently poisonous gas…) will kill player 2. That’s all you really need to know… oh yeah one more thing: the badgers aren’t nice and they will eat your face.

The Badgers of Fury 161 was developed by the Alliance of Indie. This team was composed of developers from a number of Australia’s top Indie studios including yours truly Agent Tom (The Voxel Agents), Liam Hill (Defiant Development, 3 Blokes Studios), Cratesmith (Cratesmith,Defiant, Strange Loop), Matt Ditton (Queensland College of Art, Defiant), and the incredibly talented Milenko (Strange Loop,Defiant).

Matt Ditton, Agent Tom, Liam Hill, Cratesmith, Milenko

But really, kudos where kudos is due:
As proud as we are of the game we managed to make in 48 Hours, the real winners of the competition were the indie team Rockin Moses (read about them here: http://making-games.net/48/?p=2916) who made a really fun game called The Fifth Suit. 

This game was great fun to play. For me, their game evoked “Smash Brothers Brawl”. While playing, I was less concerned about winning and more concerned about trying to make life difficult for my opponents. It was a strong social experience and quite a polished product for just 48 hours of work! You can grab a PC version of their game here [WIN] but it’s best played with XBox controllers. If you’re lucky enough to have some XBox controllers then I strongly suggest you get this version [WIN - XBox Controllers].

Congratulations Rockin Moses!

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Last years winners, Cratewerks, which included Matt Ditton and Cratesmith, are combining forces with one of 2007 and 2008 winners, Agent Tom Killen, of the teams sif90 (2007, 2008) and The Voxel Agents (2010). They will be joined by the exceptionally talented Liam Hill, Mark Filippelli, and Milenko.

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We spend a lot of time being all creative and fuzzy and nice here at The Voxel Agents, but often we need to stand back and have a good hard think about what’s actually happening out there in the mobile games space.

To make sure we are all still on top of everything, I spent all of last week researching the mobile market space. I forgot everything I knew about iPhone and Android and had a good hard look at the information that is out there. Some of my findings certainly will be old news to you, and some might change what you thought you knew. So, if you’re interested in the business (pronounced “biz-niz”) side of being an indie game developer, check this stuff out:

You may think the iPad is a mobile device, but you’d be wrong.

• 43% of iPad owners use their iPad more than their desktop computer 
• 28% say it’s their primary computer
• 34% use it more than their TV
• 83% use it primarily while at home. Only 11% use it on the go.

 

iOS has served 15 Billion downloads compared to Androids 4.5 Billion

Given that the iOS App Store has been around for so much longer, this is not a bad showing from Android. However, the vast majority of the iOS downloads occurred in the face of competition from Android. The nail in the coffin: a greater proportion of those iOS downloads were paid.

Those numbers should have six 0's after them too, by the way

Also interesting: the average iOS user has downloaded 75 apps.

Sources:

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-app-downloads-2011-7
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/07/11/ios_app_store_downloads_grow_61_average_app_price_up_14.html
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2011/07/android-4-5-billion-downloads/

Sources:

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Yangtian Li is joins us as our new graphic designer and she will also be the Minister for Pranks. Tian is a very passionate artist has a love of drawing and animation. She came to Australia from her home country of China to study and to pursue her creative ambitions. Tian is a hard core gamer – no one in the office can beat her high score at game dev story. Tian likes all sorts of art and creation including cooking and of course eating. Yum yum. She hates most sports except the ones that have background music. Tian’s short-term goal is to continue to have her work featured in artbooks and exhibitions, and also to avoid getting hit by a car because she doesn’t have health insurance. Tian was the valedictorian of her class at QANTM and has a very bright future in the gaming and animation industry. 

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We’re loud and proud of the fact that it was the 2008 48 Hour Game Competition that inspired us to start our own games studio, and so it is with a sense of purpose and trepidation that we are preparing for the 2010 challenge. Over the next 48 hours we’re going to laugh, we’re going to cry, we certainly aren’t going to sleep very much, and we’re going to make a game.

We have a lot of respect for everyone entering the competition. It’s not a small undertaking to start with nothing but a blank canvas and the need to turn three obscure words into a workable game concept.

Indeed coming up with an initial concept is one of the hardest parts of the competition (second only to the stamina that is required) so we thought we’d share the process we employ to turn those three keywords into a set of game mechanics.

To begin with, we get away from the computer. The core game mechanics are vital. We need to get our core concept worked out. So we resist the urge to fire up Photoshop and instead welcome pen and paper as our first set of tools.

For our 2008 entry, Melonauts, we had a big piece of butcher’s paper and on this we drew three columns. At the top of each column we wrote one of the keywords. In each column we extracted any verbs (action words) related to the keyword that we could think of.

For example, in 2008 the keywords were “watermelon”, “astronaut”, and “summertime”. Beneath summertime we wrote dozens of keywords including “seasons, summer, cycle, heat, sun”. Beneath “watermelon”, there were “smashing, growing, planting, harvesting, juicy”. Astronaut had concepts of “gravity, spacesuit, planets, and travel”.

We then started combining the keywords. There is an obvious link between “planting, growing, harvesting” and “seasons, cycle”. This link immediately suggests a game mechanic based on growing a watermelon crop.

Another potential concept was to combine astronaut with planets and sun. These concepts are related in a thematic way in that a game could be about an astronaut exploring different planets with different suns that affect the way plants grow.

So we had two concepts. One was a highly mechanic based game of growing and harvesting crops in cycle with the seasons, the other involved an astronaut going on a journey and exploring how watermelons would grow on different planets.

To decide between these concepts we looked to our strengths as a team. We were able to rapidly create game mechanics and we had experience in developing mechanic’s based games, but no one in the team had experience or significant ability in creating story driven exploration games.

We also considered what we were making the game for. It was the 48 Hour Game Comp and so the judges had a bunch of games they had to play. They would only have a few minutes to play each game so whatever we created had to be instantly pick up and play, and needed to express its concept within the first two minutes to be effective.

For those reasons, we chose to play to our strengths and we developed the concept where watermelons needed to be planted and harvested in cycle with the seasons. At this point astronaut was doing little more than contribute a theme to the game, and the planting and harvesting needed a purpose, and so we took the inevitable decision to make our astronauts space marines who needed to fight and needed watermelons to do so.

And so Melonauts was born. The words “summertime”, “astronaut”, and “watermelon” became distilled into a set of game mechanics based on planting and harvesting, watermelon fuelled space combat, and a relentless cycle of seasons.

To summarise our process, it is focused on producing actions words and verbs. It is the actions that translate directly to gameplay and game mechanics. We avoid exploration or story driven gameplay because that isn’t our strength and because it’s very difficult to make a story driven game compelling within just two minutes of gameplay.

There are different approaches to take. “My Mechanical Romance” by Curious Bear won in 2009 and that was largely a story driven game where they elegantly expressed a complex concept through simple game interactions. It was a beautiful game and so we don’t mean to say that being exceptionally focused on mechanics and action words is the only or the best way to approach the keywords.

We follow our mechanics driven approach because it suits our strengths. If you have a team that is great at producing concept or narrative driven gameplay, make that type of game. If you have a brilliant artist who can produce content rapidly, make a content heavy game. Play to your strengths, and us that means producing a set of simple mechanics and refining those mechanics into a short sharp game that is instantly understood and endlessly replayable.

Massive props to the SIF90 team. Simon, myself, and Matt (the three on the back right) owe a debt of gratitude to Joe Gatling (back left), Jon McEwan (front left), and Michael Szewczyk (front right) for working with us to create Melonauts. It’s a game we can all be proud off.

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Our number #1 fan, 4 year old Andrew of the U.S., has been waiting MONTHS for the chance to play Train Conductor USA.

He is a massive fan of the original Train Conductor Australia, and back in March we got an email from him wanting to know when he’d have more levels to play.

Well, after the release of Train Conductor USA today, Andrew got his chance and he was kind enough to record himself playing. Andrew, I have to say that you made my day.

Click here to listen (Warning! Incredibly cute!): Andrew Plays Train Conductor 2

We’re glad you love the game Andrew and we’ll get some more levels made for you to play soon.

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Simon Joslin, Matt Clark, and Tom Killen are pleased as punch to let everyone know that our company is now one year old! Just twelve quick months ago we (perhaps naively ) pledged to give up our day jobs and take the plunge. We decided to go indie.

We couldn’t have made it this far without fantastic support from our friends, the gaming community, and help from the Victorian Government and Industry, particularly Multimedia Victoria and the Game Developers Association of Australia.

To celebrate our birthday, we have taken the decision to go Green. We have calculated the amount of carbon we produced over the past year and we are offsetting that by purchasing carbon offsets from Greenfleet.

The Voxel Agents’ take our responsibility for the protection of the environment and the sustainability of its business very seriously. To help us in the fight against climate change we have partnered with Greenfleet. Greenfleet is the first not-for-profit forestry organisation in Australia to become an Approved Abatement Provider under the Australian Government’s Greenhouse Friendly™ initiative.

At the next Melbourne IGDA meetup (7pm Tuesday, 13th April at The Embassy), Agent Simon will be conducting a detailed discussion about our experience so far which will be of interest to everyone in the games industry, and particularly those who are contemplating going indie themselves. For those unable to attend the talk on 13th, we will make all the notes and slides available on our blog so that you don’t miss out.

Thanks for your support over the past year. A big thanks to Derek Pritchard, Logan Dowell, Jarrod Anderson, Joe Gatling, Joel Joslin, Sam Wong, Rob MacBride and of course, thank you Mr Steve Jobs.

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We had some requests from our twitter feed (follow us here) for some screenies of our latest game so we’ll put these ones out there.

Bear in mind that this game still has to go through some more QA but this is our latest creation in all its glory.

We’ll work on a video of gameplay for you guys.

Any thoughts, comments, suggestions, criticisms… compliments… much appreciated

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